Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - The Castle of Ghibliostro
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8499 Location: Penguinopolis |
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As it was noted in the article, Castle of Cagliostro, as good as it is, feels more like a "Miyazaki film" than a "Lupin III film". I think it compensates for the sometimes rounded down edges of the Lupin gang with pure, beautiful craftsmanship, though. Thus it remains the best movie featuring Lupin, if not necessarily the best "Lupin III film" (for that, I'd go to one of the better TV specials, like Episode 0: First Contact, or something more hardboiled like the latest Koike features).
It's amusing that even Hayao Miyazaki has no idea what to do with Goemon, a problem other writers and directors have (Koike's solution is simply not use him sometimes). At least Zenigata gets plenty to do, besides just play Lupin's foil (though he does that, too). Jigen is important up to a point, and then just is kind of there for no good reason than he was already there. Fujiko is more modest in this feature, but she's undercover as a chaste caregiver, so the bulk of her feminine whiles are unnecessary. I think Miyazaki wanted to portray an older, wiser Lupin towards the twilight of his career, and thus gentler and less libidinous. How was he supposed to know the franchise would go on for so many decades? Cagliostro was even in Lupin III Part V! |
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Spastic Minnow
 Bargain HunterExempt from Grammar Rules  Posts: 4630 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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A personal anecdote I have is that I have an internet friend who works for Warner Animation. She spent years working on Scooby Doo Mystery Inc. and told me the animators would obsessively watch it and steal directly from Cagliostro. Especially the chase scene.
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dm
Subscriber Posts: 1460 |
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Okay, for a good time, now go take a look at the Takahata/Miyazaki putting a few years before Cagliostro, namely, Hols, Prince of the Sun. Lots of career and industry foreshadowing, there: I've always wondered if the way Kaoru meets Shinji in Evangelion was modeled on Hols' first encounter with Hilda.
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all-tsun-and-no-dere
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 649 |
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I just wish Netflix had used the Manga dub, not the godawful Streamline one. I love the Manga dub, which has a ton of energy and strong acting, but the one they have sounds like it was recorded and mixed in a bathroom.
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Takkun4343
 Posts: 1572 Location: Englewood, Ohio |
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Considering that at its core, Eva is a collection of everything Hideaki Anno finds cool (plus his more depressive thoughts), that's a safe bet. |
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FireChick
Subscriber Posts: 2476 Location: United States |
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At least the DVD/Blu-Ray release contains both dubs, so there's that. |
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1223 |
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I just saw Cagliostro for the first time last year and it became one of my favouirite Miyazaki movies, it is very different from the rest of his works in that it has a lot more action and comedy though you can see some of Miyazaki's own ideas in the world of Lupin III.
To be honest, this is the only Lupin III anime that I've seen, but I know a little about the character and I think anyone can enjoy the movie without any prior knowledge. I can see why it's one of the most referenced anime, there's a lot of iconic scenes, I remember one in Castlevania Symphony of the Night in that you need two rings in order to access the clocktower just like this movie. I also heard that Miyazaki was inspired by an animated French movie for the look of the castle where Clarisse was trapped, which is one of my favourite parts when Lupin makes a jump in order to reach it. |
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Babel9
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With Cagliostro, Miyazaki did something truly special, which is melding the original Arsène Lupin character (written by Maurice Leblanc and shamelessly "borrowed" by Monkey Punch to invent Arsène's "grandchild", Lupin the Third)
Arsène Lupin was always a character torn between two identities, one being an impoverished and romantic nobleman and the other, a brilliant gentleman thief. It is nowhere more clearer than in Arsène Lupin's origin story, "the countess of cagliostro" in which he chooses what he is going to become. But even when choosing a life of thievery, he always keeps a soft spot for his former fiancée, Clarisse, whom somehow saves is soul and keeps him from just being a thief. Following the events of the book, Arsène Lupin will always keep a romantic and melancholic side. Miyazaki likes to adapt books and I think he must have read some of Leblanc's originals, and decided to make his Lupin a little bit closer from his namesake. |
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FLCLGainax
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What's interesting about this film is that it's a merging of the Monkey Punch derivative work with the original Maurice Leblanc source material. Miyazaki to certain extent "adapted" the "Countess of Cagliostro" stories from the Arsène Lupin novels.
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TurnerJ
Posts: 482 Location: Highland Park, NJ |
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Such a great film! And to think it turned 40 recently. For Miyazaki's first feature, it still holds up very well, and it could very well be my favorite Lupin movie of all time. I recently gave a virtual panel presentation celebrating its 40th anniversary, BTW. Either way, this film is a timeless classic.
The Manga dub is indeed great, but it also had oodles of profanity which I didn't think was all that necessary to begin with. (Luckily the BD offers an option to hear the dub without all the cursing. I don't find the Streamline dub that bad (I've heard worse), but it IS inferior to the Manga one in many ways. For one thing, the use of Lupin's name as Wolf (understandable at the time given the circumstances) is jarring, and I find a lot of the delivery to be stilted in that one. Bob Bergen is a great actor, but he doesn't really strike me as a great fit for Lupin. I felt David Hayter was a better match for this character. I also liked Clarisse's voice better in the Manga dub; I thought she sounded too mature and not as innocent in the Streamline version. The biggest issue I had was with all the extra talking in the Streamline dub. I didn't mind that approach so much in Kiki's Delivery Service or Castle in the Sky (in part because I found Phil Hartman in the former and the pirates in the latter to be extremely funny and priceless), but I felt that it doesn't really work well with this movie. Plus the sound mix isn't that great. I did find it amusing that Kirk Thornton shows up in both dubs, though. Last edited by TurnerJ on Fri Jul 10, 2020 1:47 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Swissman
Posts: 793 Location: Switzerland |
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Castle of Cagliostro is actually not very different from the rest of his earlier work. Miyazaki's speciality has always been to create action scenes with lots of energy and comedy. Think of series like Conan or Sherlock Hound, some of the early Toei movies he has been working on or the early Ghibl movies such as Laputa. It was only later that he mostly became known in the west for his depiction of fantasy worlds with emphasis on nature's beauty (and danger) and lots of bizarre creatures like in Chihiro, Ponyo or Howl's moving castle.
That would be Paul Grimault's "Le roi et l'oiseau". |
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Zeparu
Posts: 11 |
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It should also be noted that The Castle of Cagliostro wasn't Miyazaki's first encounter with the Lupin III franchise. Both him and Isao Takahata were key directors of the first Lupin III TV series in the early 70's. So Miyazaki was a core factor in shaping the tone of the whole Lupin III anime franchise. TWIA makes it more look like he came in as an outsider to put his perspective on an already established franchise.
The tonal shift rather reflects Miyazaki's own advancement as a director, especially after Heidi and Future Boy Conan. But his passion for silly slapstick can still be seen in many of his later works like Castle in the Sky and Porco Rosso. I always felt like The Cat Returns was in part a hommage to early Miyazaki and not so much a continuation of the later Ghibli themes, which is ironic given how many Ghibli fans always note how un-Miyazaki that movie was. |
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FLCLGainax
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The cursing was probably added to the Manga dub for marketing purposes, because around that time (2000) the only other Lupin movie on the market was Mamo from Streamline. Also, Princess Mononoke was the big Miyazaki movie in US theaters. If it had been dubbed a couple of years later, post-Spirited Away, perhaps the language wouldn't have been added in. Then again, this is Manga, so who knows. Streamline's dub was typical of Macek-produced dubs of the early Streamline days with over-written ADR scripts and voice actors who sounded too old or too young for their characters. As for the soundmix, the studio may have been working from less than ideal materials for the backing track. Their dub of My Neighbor Totoro (the old Fox Video one) also sounds pretty bad. |
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Barciad
 Posts: 131 Location: St Andrews |
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'Castle of Cagliostro' always had an air of 'Lupin, for people that don't like Lupin'. Speaking as someone that always got put off by the crude/exploitative nature of the more traditional work. Miyazaki's film was nothing short of a breath of fresh air. Simply for the reason that it was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki.
I.e. a director that (despite his more cantankerous personal nature) has never hidden his deep humanistic beliefs. |
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